Wednesday, December 22, 2010

OPRAH COVERS PARADE MAGAZINE

Oprah Winfrey covers the latest issue of Parade, in which she opens up about her new network, her biggest fears, how she hates the word ‘brand’ and more.

In exclusives extras, she also shares her thoughts on Sarah Palin and talks about how Michael Jackson helped her take the risk with the network. Check out a few snippets below.

On retirement:â€œI was questioning, ‘Why donâ€™t I build a boat and sail around the world? Why donâ€™t I learn French and find a nice little house in Provence?’ I could see myself bicycling with my baguettes and the whole thing. But I talked it over with my friends, and they all said, ‘Youâ€™re not going to be happy doing nothing‘”.

On what she perceives as failure:“What will be a failure is if nobody comes and watches this network. What others will perceive as failure is if some shows don’t succeed. I’m concerned about the bigger overall picture: my belief that people are basically good and want to see the good in them reflected through their experiences and the shows that they watch. This is a gamble I’m taking. I believe that the banal state of television, the kind of insipid space that we’re in–that you can have as many channels as we have and not find anything that really interests you–means that to a great extent we’ve lost our way.”

On President Obama:“I think that no one understands until you’ve been in that seat the enormous pressure to please and satisfy everybody. And I think instead of being grateful for where we are and what he has done, we’ve forgotten that we were on the brink of a depression when he took over this office. And as everybody celebrates the holiday season and sits around with their families, regardless of your circumstance, we could’ve had breadlines. How soon we forget that.”

On becoming an ambassador:“Nobody’s offered [that] to me in this administration. But I will tell you a funny story. When I was at the Kennedy Center Honors for Tina Turner [in 2005], I was sitting at Colin Powell’s table, and he said that we were in the ambassadors room [a room at the State Department with portraits of ambassadors and secretaries of state]. And I said, ‘Gee, this is really–this is lovely. An ambassador, I think that would be really great.’ He goes, ‘Name your country, baby, name your country.’ ”